WLMM is something which is a separate download in the Windows Live suite of applications. It does not come bundled with Windows 7 but can be added in easily.

The last time I tried this software it was in beta form. Admittedly, I hated it. But now the software is finished so I gave it a go. It is far better than it was in beta and a truly completed product.

There is a video below this showing a basic tutorial of how to get simple thing done in WLMM, here’s a few questions answered up front.

Is it the same as the older Windows Movie Maker?

No. The way in which is operates is completely different. It has the ribbon interface seen in the updated versions of the Office suite, Paint and Windows Live Mail. This is an attempt by Microsoft to make everything look similar no matter what you’re using.

Is it better than the older Windows Movie Maker?

Yes. It supports the native import of more formats (like MOV, MP4 and M4A for example), has effects that are much more streamlined and useful and also has other useful bits, such as direct-to-DVD, direct-to-YouTube and so on.

Is there a learning curve with WLMM?

Yes. You will not take to it like a fish to water. But as stated in the video, once you start using it you’ll realize the way in which it works does make sense, and over time you will be able to edit videos faster and more efficiently. The only people who would purposely stay with the old Windows Movie Maker are robbing themselves of a truly good and useful video editor.

See video below for more details.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Windows Live Movie Maker Tutorial (Video)

Quake Live is an FPS style game that’s completely in-browser, and that means it’s cross-browser/cross-platform compatible.

The plan here is to schedule an event to get a bunch of PCMech readers (yes, that means you’re invited) into the game to see if you guys and gals actually like it or not. Consider it a "mass review" to test out the game along with being able to play with an actual PCMech author, that being yours truly.

From the previous article, I’ve discovered a few things, with the biggest being that if you’re running things that block scripting and Flash such as NoScript or FlashBlock for Firefox, the game will not work. You will need to temporarily disable those for gameplay.

In addition there are several options you can set to make gameplay better per your computer’s specifications, such as adjusting texture detail, full-screen mode and so on. This is accessed in-game by pressing ESC on your keyboard and making the appropriate adjustments. The video below shows you how to do this, so be sure to watch it. Bear in mind you can go higher or lower, so even if you have an older computer, you can disable/downgrade enough stuff to make the game enjoyable and fluid on play.

Note on the video: My frame rate is crappy because my capture software isn’t designed to "grab" high-frame stuff like that. Believe me when I say the frame rate you’ll get will be a million times better and completely fluid.

This video makes note of my Quake Live ID:

http://www.quakelive.com/#profile/summary/frostedside

After logging in to Quake Live, you can add me in as a friend by going to the above link, or you can manually add by searching for the ID frostedside.

See video below for more details. There are also some scheduling notes below the video.

Scheduling notes

As for when I plan on getting everybody in on a game, it may happen this evening (as in today Wednesday November 18) during the PCMech LIVE broadcast from 8pm to 10pm EST.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Quake Live (With Video And Scheduling Update)

While Virtual PC does not support hardware acceleration, you can see that it runs the FPS Quake 2 quite well using software rendering. That said, true legacy games should run fine in a virtual machine with little performance hit. You should, however disable Integrated Mode if you are using Windows XP Mode in Windows 7.

Does anyone currently play games in a virtual machine? If so, how is the performance?

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Gaming On A Virtual PC

Some UNIX/Linux environments purposely use specific extensions for the sake of convenience because they’re technically not required. For example, the Debian distribution uses files that end with .deb to represent a Debian software package. When you see a file that ends with .deb, you instantly know what it is. You can consider filename extension use in a UNIX/Linux environment to be more of a descriptor (i.e. metadata) than anything else.

The Windows environment requires filename extensions to operate. Traditional extensions do not exceed three characters. For those of you thinking, "Isn’t is true all file types in Windows use three-character filename extensions?" Not necessarily. 7-Zip for example uses the two-character .7z by default, and several programming languages use one or two-character extensions.

Common filename extensions that confuse people as to what they are

Some extensions are really easy to figure out because they’re part of a word.

Examples: TXT (TeXT), DOC (DOCument), BAT (BATch script file), COM (COMmand), WAV (WAVe sound file), SH (SHell)

Then there are those that are abbreviations, like PDF (Portable Document Format).

But then there are those that do nothing but confuse people because they don’t know what they are. Here’s a few should you encounter them:

M3U and PLS

These are both file types that represent a multimedia playlist. Many get confused when they encounter these because they think there’s actual audio within them. Not true. They are small "pointers" to other audio files (such as MP3) either local to your computer and/or on the internet.

The super-long title for M3U is "Moving Picture Experts Group Audio Layer 3 Uniform Resource Locator". Try and say that 5 times fast.

PLS to the best of my knowledge means either PLaylistS or PLay Stream, although I could be mistaken (and if I am, feel free to correct me by posting a comment).

ODT

This is a file type that that is slowly becoming recognized in mainstream use, that being the OpenDocument Format. The T is for text. There is also ODS with S for spreadsheet, ODP with P for presentation, ODG with G for graphics and ODF with F for formulae (mathematical equations).

Most people know ODT files from using the freely available OpenOffice suite. The ODT format by the way is compatible with Google Docs if you don’t have software to read them.

RAR

Most people know what this is but there are still a few that don’t. It’s a Roshal ARchive. This is an archive format like ZIP. If you want to open one, use 7-Zip or WinZIP (paid software). If you want to create one, use WinRAR (also paid software).

FLV

FLash Video. If you want to view an FLV video independently (meaning not in your web browser), use the freely available VLC.

FLAC

Free Lossless Audio Codec; an audio file type that sounds better than MP3 because it is lossless while MP3 isn’t. To play them you can use Windows Media Player or the freely available WinAMP.

3GP and 3G2

Both of these are usually video file formats and part of the 3GPP standard. You will usually only encounter these when someone sends you a video file via a cell phone. Windows Vista and 7 will view these via Windows Media Player. If using XP, use Apple QuickTime.

M4A and MP4

Both are MPEG-4 Part 14.

Both file types can be either audio or video. While it’s true that most files ending in .m4a are audio-only, it doesn’t mean they have to be.

Windows Media Player 12 – which is bundled with Windows 7 – will play this format. For older versions of Windows you can use Apple QuickTime or the freely available VLC.

OGG

A newer multimedia file format. It can be audio or video. This format can be opened and played on many different programs, including the freely available VLC.

Older file types you may encounter

What’s listed below isn’t in mainstream use any longer, but should you encounter them you’ll at least know what they are and how to deal with them.

ARJ

An archive file type like ZIP and RAR.

ARJ is Archived by Robert Jung. This file type was actually quite popular during the 1990s and at one point gave ZIP some really good competition. 7-Zip is able to open these.

WPS

This is a proprietary document format used by the Microsoft Works when you save a document with it. It is the file extension everybody hates because nobody can open them that doesn’t have Works.

Fortunately you can do a Save as in Works and save in DOC format, but most people who use Works do not do that. And if you use Works, I strongly urge that you always save in DOC and not WPS – especially if you’re sending documents to other people.

Got a bunch of WPSes and need to convert them? Use Zamzar to do it. (WPS conversion, thankfully, is supported.)

TIF or TIFF

This is an image file type. It stands for Tagged Image File Format. Most image editors can easily open TIFF files, including the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer which is included with the Windows OS.

If for whatever reason you have a problem (which you shouldn’t) opening a TIFF, use the freely available GIMP software.

RTF

This is Rich Text Format, a document type developed by Microsoft way back in 1987. It is still, even in Windows 7, used as the default file type when saving from it’s bundled word processing application WordPad.

For older generation computer users, RTF sticks out like a sore thumb due to the fact so many people used Windows Write (the predecessor to WordPad). But many newer generation users have never seen RTF files.

Shades of the past: Using the Start/Run dialog in Windows 7, if you type write and click OK, WordPad will load up.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Demystifying Modern Filename Extensions

I do not yet have Windows 7 so I cannot test them, however I can see the quick closing of programs from the dock window and new folder creation shortcut being very useful.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Useful (Brief) List Of Windows 7 Shortcuts

1. They’re usually significantly smaller compared to a DOC (especially if there are images within).
2. They look exactly the same no matter what OS you use.
3. It is true WYSIWYG concerning printers. What you see on screen is precisely what will print out on paper.
4. The likelihood of a PDF containing a virus and/or malicious scripting is slim to none. Not impossible, but highly unlikely.

Before getting into SumatraPDF and why I think it’s the best PDF viewer ever, here’s an explanation of why we hate PDF.

What we hate about PDFs aren’t the files themselves, but the reader applications.

I wholly believe that Adobe Reader is evil. Very evil. Why? Well, first of all it’s a 26MB installer file. For a document reader? Yes. What’s in that 26MB? A whole lot of crap you don’t need.

The crapola starts even before you download the file. You specifically have to uncheck a box so you don’t download the "Free McAfee Security Scan."

The Adobe Reader installer as far as I’m concerned tries every way to hijack your web browser by installing a ton of useless garbage. You have to go through the installation procedure very s-l-o-w-l-y, else it will put install a plugin in all your browsers. What happens after that is that on any attempt to load a PDF from a web page, all this CRAP loads up from Adobe Reader asking you a whole bunch of questions on first run, and worst of all loads the PDF directly in the browser. This absolutely scares the daylights out of people because they think the browser is crashing due to the fact Reader is so bloated, huge and takes forever even to get started. And in some instances the browser does crash because of Adobe Reader.

Adobe Reader is evil. Period.

The significantly smaller FoxIt Reader was a good alternative. But now it has promotional banner graphics inside the reader. Evil. And it tries to do the same browser hijack crap Adobe Reader does. Eeeevil. And you now have to very s-l-o-w-l-y go through the installation process just like with Adobe to make sure a bunch of crap (like, oh, I dunno, a useless toolbar) doesn’t get installed. Eeeeeeeeeevil.

FoxIt Reader is now also evil. Sad but true.

Going PDF reader-less

I hated PDF readers so much that I simply uninstalled them and used Google Docs to read my PDF files. That system reads them easily – but with one huge drawback: It’s not the easiest thing in the world to print a PDF out of Google Docs. You’re better off printing direct from a PDF document reader.

Enter SumatraPDF

SumatraPDF has an installer that is only 1.4MB in size. It is free and open source. It does not have any stupid toolbar installers in it. It does not try to hijack your web browsers. The only thing it will ask you is if you want it to be the default reader for PDF files – that’s it.

It is wonderful. All I ever wanted was to just view the PDFs I download, and that’s exactly what SumatraPDF does with no fuss whatsoever.

Can SumatraPDF read all PDF files? Mostly. The only ones it would have a problem with are the super-advanced type with intricate fill-in forms and whatnot. But other than that it will happily read just about any PDF file you load into it.

Example: Let’s say you downloaded Form W-4 from the IRS, which happens to be a PDF:

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw4.pdf

In SumatraPDF:

Loads perfectly. Prints perfectly. And that’s all you ever want out of a PDF document reader.

The only thing you ever hated about PDF files were the readers needed to view them. But after using SumatraPDF, you’ll happily dump FoxIt and Adobe to the curb.

SumatraPDF is the best PDF viewer ever because it opens PDF files with zero hassle and does so lightning quick; that’s why it’s the best (on Windows).

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

SumatraPDF, Best PDF Viewer Ever?

START /D “path_to_program” program_name

For example, to open both Firefox and IE, the batch file would look like this:

START /D “C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer” iexplore.exe
START /D “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox” firefox.exe

Just save the above text into a batch file named Browsers.bat and then run it. You will see both Firefox and IE are launched. This is just a simple example, so you would want to configure the programs to be what you need.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Batch Script To Open Multiple Programs At Once

This review is not going to concentrate on how much stuff MSE can detect but rather boiled down to a simple question:

Does it get in your way?

I’ll explain that further.

Applications specifically designed to protect your computer will at times will annoy you. These annoyances come in the form of slowing the OS down, overzealous protection where it prompts for every single thing you could possibly think of (even worse than the UAC for Vista,) interrupting the normal operation of other programs that use the internet and so on.

It reasons like this that some people don’t even bother running protection software because it literally gets in the way of normal computer use.

Here’s the stuff that matters concerning MSE. I used my main desktop, which runs Windows 7 Home Premium, to test with.

Installation

Quick. Very quick. No long drawn-out installation procedures of any kind.

Virus/Spyware/Malware definitions first download

No faster than any other suite of this type would provide.

First scan of PC for viruses

This took a while. Once again it’s on par for the course with other protection suites.

Interface

You know it’s running by a green castle icon in the taskbar:

I do appreciate its obvious nature. Green means good and the checkmark further drives home that point.

Double-clicking the castle icon brings up the interface:

This is a very clean, very easy-to-use app. Big tabs show very clearly where you are at any time. Scan options on the right are also very easy.

One thing I particularly appreciate is how easy it is to tell MSE to avoid stuff. This is located on the Settings tab.

I can easily define what I don’t want MSE to scan. On my PC I specifically have it avoid the mail profile directory for Mozilla Thunderbird because the real-time protection was slowing it down a bit. I’ll speak more on that in a moment.

In the Advanced part of settings you also have a few very convenient options:

Telling MSE to not scan removable drives is a huge plus. For example, if you have a USB stick full of photos, there obviously aren’t going to be viruses present on that storage medium, so there’s no need to scan it when connected to your PC.

Real-time protection

This is something many people avoid using in a protection suite due to the fact it can slow down Windows to a crawl.

The way in which MSE uses real-time fortunately does not do this. When real-time is enabled, Windows for the most part will still operate as it did without it – and that’s a big plus.

What does "for the most part" mean? It means that in certain instances you will notice little pauses here and there. This is something all protection suites with real-time protection do. Those pauses are the little scans the suite is performing.

For example, I noticed it in Mozilla Thunderbird when I would move an email from one folder to another. It wasn’t a huge pause by any means, but I did notice it.

My way around this was to instruct MSE (as seen above) to not scan the Thunderbird mail profile directory. At that point the pausing went away instantly. Yes, it’s true, my email is not being scanned but I can easily manually scan attachments and other mails that would appear from not-so noble senders (read: spammers.)

Easy right-click access

Right-click any file anywhere and you can scan it, like this:

The castle icon you see here is blue instead of green, but it’s still very obvious what the menu choice does and the visual cue makes it easy to find at any time.

When you scan, the app pops up and tells you if it found anything:

Once again, green means good.

Other protection suites have similar functionality with the right-click context menu, but the difference here is speed. MSE is fast. No grinding of the hard drive waiting for the app to pop up. You right click, you scan, and ta-da, it’s right there.

The scan works on individual files or entire folders along with its subfolders.

Does it get in the way?

I can say with confidence that MSE does in fact stay out of your way while still providing excellent protection against viruses, malware and spyware – and in addition keeps the user in mind in the way it operates.

I like it enough that I intend to keep it installed – and that’s saying a lot because I’m a very anti-antivirus type of computer user due to the fact I normally can’t stand protection software suites. MSE does not slow down my PC, nor does it get in my way. And that’s good enough for me.

Is MSE better or worse than other protection suites?

MSE’s single largest advantage is that it’s a Microsoft product and therefore runs very happily with the Windows operating system. I don’t believe it will add in any additional level of protection that other suites don’t already cover – but it’s a pretty safe bet that it will probably run faster.

On a final note, no, this is not Windows Defender 2.0, and I can prove it:

Defender comes provided with Windows Vista and 7. MSE supersedes that software and is a very notable improvement all around. It is far superior and "smart" enough to turn Defender off on install so MSE can do the job it’s supposed to.

Does this mean you stop using Defender when using MSE? Yes.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Review, Microsoft Security Essentials

Here’s how to use an alternative skin for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera.

Internet Explorer

IE has never been easy to alter per its appearance. It’s tough to move around buttons, and any attempt to skin it usually results in it not working correctly due to the fact a DLL or two has to be altered (and that’s not smart.)

The way around this is to simply use another browser that uses the IE Trident engine. A good choice for this is Avant Browser. It is fully "skinnable" and just about everything you can think of can be changed in it. It also has something very desirable: A built-in flash animation filter to cut out unwanted Flash content when browsing. In addition to that it’s compatible with many exiting IE add-ons such as Google Toolbar.

Mozilla Firefox

Firefox has several ways in which you can skin it. The traditional way is to browse the themes available, and add in the one you want right from that web site. The second way is to use Personas, which you may find more attractive due to the fact you have more options. For example, you can use any background image you want with Personas and save your own custom themes easily.

The last way to skin Firefox is, if you’re daring, to directly edit the CSS files it uses in the chrome directory. This is not to be confused with Google Chrome. Chrome has two files that you can edit and enable for hand-coded customizations.

Opera

Like Firefox, Opera has its own dedicated directory for skins. An advantage over IE and FF is on that page you can simply pick the color type you want:

..and go from there.

Other apps you can skin to your liking

Windows Media Player 11

This takes some effort but it’s do-able.

First, launch Windows Media Player.

Press CTRL+1 to go to "Library Mode" (CTRL+2 is "Skin Mode", CTRL+3 is "Now Playing Mode", which is the default most people use).

Press CTRL+M to show the Menu Bar.

Click View and then Skin chooser, like this:

Click the More skins button:

You’ll then be taken to a web site where you can download compatible skins.

Skins are single files with a .wmz extension. You can simply run them and they’ll install themselves.

This is what WMP 11 looks like with the Batman Begins skin:

Note: Some of you may get an error on install of certain skins. If you do, try them anyway. Most of the time they’ll work fine. If not, just switch back to Library Mode with a CTRL+1, go back to the skin chooser and try something different or just remove the skin.

Trillian Astra

This instant messaging program has long had the ability to use custom skins. Astra, the latest version of Trillian also has full skin support.

Below is one of the built-in choices, "Cobalt."

You can find many more skins for Trillian here.

VLC

It is, for whatever reason, widely unknown that VLC can be skinned easily. VideoLAN themselves has a whole section of their web site dedicated to it.

One of the most popular skins, oddly enough, is to make VLC look like Windows Media Player 11:

Looks pretty darned convincing if you asked me. The only thing that tips it off that it’s VLC is the orange cone VLC icon at the top left of the app window, and of course the title bar.

Some notes about skinning applications

Customizing the look of apps can be fun, but how it will work is largely dependent on how well a skin or theme is programmed, as there are some crappy ones out there. The general rule of thumb is to choose one that has been downloaded many times, has good ratings and in best case scenario has comments on what work and what doesn’t when using it.

It’s also good to know how to remove skins if you download one, install it but then decide you don’t want it later. Most skins are self-contained, but some put hooks into applications that if left installed may adversely affect functionality of the program. This doesn’t happen often but it’s good to be aware of it.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Web Browser Skinning How-To

The documentation is pretty easy to follow, but for example suppose you want to extend the size of your E drive with some empty space on the end:

1. Make sure you have your data backed up (just in case)
2. Open a command prompt as the Administrator
3. Type ‘diskpart’
4. Type ‘list disk’ to get the disk number of the drive
5. Type ’select disk=[disk#]‘
6. Type ‘list partition’ to get the partition number of the partition to extend
7. Type ’select partition=[partition#]‘
8. Type ‘extend’
9. Once the command completes, your E drive is now resized to include the additional empty space

Note: You cannot use this to resize the active system drive (usually C), so if you do need to resize your C drive, you would need to remove the hard drive from the computer and plug it into another computer where it is not the C drive. Once you do this you can then resize it.

This also works in virtual machines, so you can use this in combination with the VHD Resizer tool to completely manage your VHD files.

While there are certainly more user friendly and feature-rich products available, this tool does the job quickly and easily.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Builtin Microsoft Tool To Easily Extend A Partition Size